I wonder if that pilot flying the A-6 Intruder that I think I was in when we were shot down on 2/14/86 was named Ken Morgan. In my symbolic "memories," Ken Morgan was a guy who lived off Hicks Road between our house and Wilton. His house was a little ways down a dirt road that led off from where Hicks Road makes a 90-degree turn towards Wilton. Billy Parker lived nearby but off a different dirt road that ran off that 90-degree turn. I "remember" that Ken had some kind of little car that was not unlike Billy Parker's Comet, but I can't "remember" the make Ken drove. It might have been a Mustang II, which I think was very different than the Mustang. But I "remember" it was a butt-ugly yellowish-green kind of color. I also "remember" that Ken liked to pull back the emergency brake when he was driving because it would cause the car to spin around a few times, which was a pretty dumb thing to do. I have this visualization in my mind of sitting there talking to him in that car and I can picture him half-looking at me as he had his hand on the emergency brake and saying he was going to pull it. But he must not have because I don't "remember" the car spinning around. What is really odd about that "memory" is that it is right around the point on Hicks Road where my step-brother, Michael, died. He was driving in the opposite direction than we were that day he died though. Michael drifted off the right side of the road, his right tire got caught in a narrow utility ditch that had been dug along the side of the road, he over-corrected, which caused his pickup to spin around and go off the other side of the road. When his pickup hit a tree on the right side, he was thrown across the cab and broke his skull on the right side door. He was there a few hours before any one found him, that day 11/25/86.
I wonder if that "memory" of Thedia's dog, Taffy, being trapped in the folding bed represents me being trapped in rubble of that Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983. I "remember" that other kid and I were sitting on the couch and we could hear it making sounds, probably because we were crushing it even worse. I said something about it must be the dog's ghost, as I had been wondering for a while what happened to the dog. It had been trapped in that folded bed all that day. When I finally figured out where it was, I unfolded the bed and let it out. It jumped out and ran across the floor to its water bowl. The detail in that symbolic “memory” about hearing the dog could represent me calling out to rescuers trying to dig me out. And the folding bed detail of that “memory” makes for a perfect analogy of being trapped in the rubble of the barracks.
Why do I always have to be the one targeted by these deranged lunatics.
Update: What if that "memory" about Taffy is actually how President Reagan was informed that I was trapped in that barracks? It is something about how we communicated. Maybe his daughter Maureen would find out somehow what happened to me and my code name was Taffy. She would call him on the phone and talk about her dog named Taffy. Taffy was my code name because of the Taffy units from U.S. Navy Task Force 77.4 from World War 2. When she talked about Taffy, he would know she was relaying something about me to him.
